


A Ribbiting Start

by OnyxBird



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: And Yusuf insists on feeling sorry for this idiot frog., Angst and Humor, Crack, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Frog Prince AU, Gen, Joe got cheated because instead of a prince he gets a scruffy invader, Pre-Relationship, This should be pure silliness but Nicky refuses to entirely give up his philosophical bent or guilt.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28824501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxBird/pseuds/OnyxBird
Summary: Yusef managed to catch himself before he cracked his skull on the edge of the well. Given his experiences over the past couple of days, he most likely would have recovered from that, but, temporary or not, death by frog would have been an embarrassing way to go.Yusef al-Kaysani, having recently discovered his immortality during the siege of Jerusalem, discovers that his immortal invader nemesis is now an immortal talking frog.(AKA the Frog Prince AU no one asked for.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 30
Kudos: 49





	1. A Frog That Won't Croak

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a Tumblr post documenting [multiple instances of Nicky doing a little tongue-flick](https://wickedpact.tumblr.com/post/630263222949281792/nicky-doing-that) that got me thinking about Nicky transformed into a frog. 
> 
> No guarantees regarding accuracy of either history or frog biology.

Yusuf carefully wiped the blood off the blade of his scimitar onto the shoulder of the corpse that had spilled it. He strained his ears for any sound indicating the arrival of allies of the handful of now-dead bandits. As he re-sheathed his weapon, a subtle movement and a glimpse of incongruous green caught his eye. A green frog watched him from where it crouched up against the base of the well.

_Oh, yes._ He'd caught a glimpse of the bandits tormenting the poor creature when he'd first stumbled into their midst. Yusuf sighed and crouched down for a closer look. He recalled seeing a boot come down hard, crushing its leg, right before the boot's owner had drawn a blade and joined his fellows charging at Yusuf. Not a survivable injury for a wild creature like this. It would probably be kindest to put it out of its misery before it succumbed to starvation or predators.

His brow furrowed. The frog looked...fine. Were there two of them? He glanced back at the spot where he'd glimpsed it before. There was one distinct smear of blood on the flagstones—his fight with the bandits had not ranged back that far—and, _yes_ , some fainter smears along a line from that first mark leading back to...the frog by the well. The apparently _uninjured_ frog by the well. It had to be the same frog—there were few places for another to hide on the flagstones and no further traces of blood to mark an escape route. As he peered closer, the frog decided enough was enough and hopped further around the perimeter of the well, out of Yusuf's reach.

“Well, my friend,” mused Yusuf, his eyebrows rising, “I thought you were done for, but it seems I underestimated you. Or overestimated your injuries. I'm glad to see it.”

He rose to his feet, preparing to fill his waterskin and continue on his way, when he noticed something odd on the far side of the well. A sheathed sword lay on the ground, next to a pile of cloth. None of the bandits had wielded a similar sword.

_It looks like the Frank's_ , his brain supplied.

Yusuf shook his head. Many Franks carried swords of this style, and he was not so familiar with them to imagine that he could pick one out from the rest based only on what he had seen while fighting for his life against its owner. Besides, the undying Frank would hardly have abandoned his weapon here to the bandits, and he would have been at least as difficult to subdue as Yusuf. Even if they had caught him unawares and slit his throat, they would never have been prepared when he returned to life.

The pile of cloth turned out to be clothing. A full set of men's clothing, right down to the undergarments. Mail, too. Unbloodied, but left in an untidy heap, as if the wearer had simply stripped everything off and let it fall in a heap. There was also the sword, a shield, and a waterskin. A pack was nearby, open and partially emptied, with various items (presumably its former contents) spread haphazardly around it. Yusuf's guess was that the bandits were looting the pack when he interrupted them.

But what, then, had happened to its owner? Was there a naked, unarmed Frank wandering around somewhere?

After a long, considering look around the area, now-deserted except for Yusuf and the corpses of the bandits, Yusuf grabbed the clothing with one hand and reached for the sword with the other.

He heard a garbled shout in a language he did not recognize, and a blur of green smacked him in the face.

***

The frog spoke Greek.

Not _well_ , admittedly. But so far as Yusuf knew, frogs generally did not speak at all, so it spoke Greek remarkably well for a frog.

Yusuf had fallen on his ass, but, fortunately, managed to catch himself before he cracked his skull on the stone edge of the well. Given his experiences over the past couple of days, he most likely would have recovered from such an accident, but, temporary or not, death by frog would have been an embarrassing way to go.

After bouncing off his chin, the agitated frog flailed clumsily on its back amid the tangle of dropped clothing, struggling to turn over, while berating Yusuf in a bizarre mishmash of croaks and near-human-sounding speech. At first, unable to distinguish any recognizable words from the clamor, Yusuf had nearly convinced himself that it was just an unfamiliar variety of frog with unsettlingly humanlike calls...Then his ear started to pick out the Greek…

There was a lot of cursing, recognizable from the tone despite the odd accent. Tenuous grammar, strange vocabulary, and a croaky timbre made the rest harder to parse, but Yusuf was fairly sure he had been called both a thief and a barbarian. That should have been offensive, but he found it difficult to muster up any emotion other than bemusement when faced with a frog insulting him in Greek.

By this time, the frog had finally righted itself to glare at him. One hind leg remained awkwardly stretched behind him. After a moment of puzzlement, Yusuf realized it was tangled in a fold of the shirt the frog was sitting on. His flailing amid the cloth had apparently twisted the fabric around his foot, and flipping upright had cinched it.

Yusuf frowned and pushed himself off the ground into a crouch, reaching for the frog.

“Oh, you've got your foot caught, little one,” he crooned reassuringly. “Let me get you out of that.”

The frog was not reassured. He leapt to escape Yusuf's reaching hand, only to be brought up short at the full extent of his trapped leg, his mass far too small to budge the mail-entwined cloth. His interrupted momentum spun him around his trapped foot, twisting the cloth even tighter.

Yusuf sighed and quickly grabbed the flailing amphibian, which was back to croaking and cursing Yusuf out in a mixture of Greek and an unidentified language. He realized with a grimace that he had spoken to it in Arabic, not Greek. No wonder it had had little effect.

Yusuf switched to Greek instead. “Stay still,” he reproached. “You're getting yourself more tangled. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to get your foot free.”

The frog froze in his hand. Yusuf wasn't sure if that indicated agreement or simply shock that Yusuf was speaking to him in a language he recognized. In any case, he wasn't going to let the opportunity pass.

Uncertain what was in the pile of clothes and armor, he didn't risk trying to move it while it was still tangled around the frog, instead carefully shuffling his feet around the heap, slowly rotating himself and the frog to untwist the tangle. The frog yanked his foot free as soon as the fabric's grip slackened.

Yusuf carefully lifted the frog to eye level. The leg looked uninjured. He met the bulging eyes consideringly, and the two stared at each other in silence for a long moment.

“Hello,” said Yusuf, in Greek. “Do you understand me?”

The frog stared at him. Just as Yusuf was starting to think he had imagined things…

“Yes.”

Yusuf realized that he didn't actually have a follow-up prepared for this.

“I see. I have never met a talking frog before. Are you going to run away or attack me again if I set you down?”

There was an even longer pause this time.

“...I...do not...understand,” said the frog haltingly. The end of the final word was swallowed by a croak, making it almost unintelligible.

_Oh, dear._ He sighed and carefully placed the frog on a clear patch of flagstones, safely away from the pile of cloth.

He tried again, speaking slowly and clearly. “You speak, yes?”

“Yes?”

“And you are a frog.”

“[Croak]...I am what?”

“A. Frog.”

“I do not know what is 'a frog.'”

Yusuf shook his head. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He wracked his brains for words that the frog might know that could clarify why it had attacked him. _Ah, yes._ “Thief,” it had called him.

“You called me 'thief,'” he stated. “Why?”

“You were stealing…” the frog began.

Yusuf blinked as he finished the sentence. He must have heard one of those words wrong.

“Did you say 'sword'?” he clarified.

“Yes.”

“ _Your_ sword?”

“Yes!”

He looked at the frog. He looked at the sword on the ground. The blade of the sword was as wide as the frog's entire body. The knob on the end of the pommel alone probably outweighed the frog.

It was the only sword in evidence. He pointed to it anyway, so there would be no ambiguity. “That sword?”

“Yes! My sword. And my clothes.”

Yusuf looked at the only clothes in evidence, the pile on the ground, just in case he'd somehow overlooked a set of tiny, frog-sized clothing that was the only way that statement made sense.

He pointed again. “These clothes?”

“Yes!” The frog sounded increasingly aggravated, and the frog-noises were threatening to overwhelm his Greek.

Yusuf frowned and tried to phrase this in the simplest possible wording. “These clothes and this sword…” he began, carefully. “How can they be yours? They are too big for you. And you are…” He paused. They had already established that the frog didn't know that word. “They are made for men. You are not a man. You are very small, and you have no hands to hold a sword.”

The frog shifted. He lifted one of its forelegs as if he was trying to get a better look at the appendage on the end of it.

When he finally answered, his voice was very quiet. “I...I was a man this morning. Now I am...I do not know what.” He interrupted himself with a croak, and Yusuf could see him twitch slightly, as if he was angry with himself for allowing it. “I do not know how this happened,” he finished.

“Oh,” said Yusuf.

Yusuf pondered this for a moment. “Did we meet before?” he asked. “Your sword and clothing remind me of a Frank I met in battle.”

At first, he thought he had again said something too complex for the frog's grasp of Greek, but after puzzling over the statement for a few moments, the frog responded.

“I do not know. I...cannot see you very well.”

“Before the brigands attacked me, did they harm you?”

“Yes.”

“One stepped on you, yes?”

After a brief clarification of “stepped on,” the frog agreed. “Yes. He caught my leg.”

“But your leg now appears to be fine.”

“...Yes...I do not know how this happens either.”

Yusuf noted the present tense.

“When the city fell, I met an invader in the field. I killed him with my blade, and he stabbed me through the chest with his own. Some time later, I awoke unharmed. Later, I met the same man, alive. We slew each other again, with the same result.”

There was a long pause. “...Then I think perhaps we did meet.”

So this _was_ the undying Frank. The one who had killed him several times over. The one who wouldn't stay dead no matter how many times Yusuf slew him. The one who had ridden in with an invading army to turn Jerusalem into a bloodbath. For a moment, Yusuf wanted to crush the creature himself for what he and his brethren had done.

Yusuf forced himself to take a breath. The undying Frank was also now a frog. An apparently undying frog. A frog that was too slow to escape a brigand's boot, too clumsy to untangle himself from a pile of fabric, and too foolish to abandon the possessions he could no longer hope to use rather than fling himself at a giant for trying to “steal” them. Attacking him now would not only be a futile gesture motivated by pure revenge rather than justice, but a cowardly revenge on a (currently) defenseless and harmless creature.

He sighed and sank into a crouch as he pondered what _to_ do about this. Watching the frog, he caught the twitch as his boots scraped on the ground and as his shadow momentarily passed over the frog. _Oh. He is still afraid of me. Or...afraid of me again now that we both know he is an invader who has killed me_.


	2. Just Des(s)erts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf tries to figure out how his nemesis turned into a frog and keep the incompetent frog from starving to death.

“What do you remember about becoming a frog?” Yusuf caught himself, even though he supposed the frog probably at least recognized that it was the same word he had used earlier. He rephrased anyway. “About becoming...this? No longer a man.”

“...Very little. I...I am not even sure how long ago it happened. This morning, I...I am sorry. I do not know the word in Greek.”

Yusuf waited, while the frog thought.

“When you leave an army. Without...without...When you are meant to stay, but you do not. When you run away. It is...dishonorable.”

Yusuf's eyebrows rose. “You deserted?”

“'Deserted'...Maybe? I don't think I have ever heard the word before. Not in Greek.”

His eyebrows knitted together, wishing amphibians had recognizable facial expressions he could read. The Frank had fought him ferociously. He had less reason than most to desert to avoid death or injury, since both were fleeting.

“Why?”

The frog shuffled its weight slightly. Yusuf thought he looked nervous. Yusuf waited.

“What was done in the city…” He paused. “What _we did_ in the city...I cannot believe that this is right. When I was raised from death, others said it was…” Yusuf waited for the frog to work around another unknown word. “...done by God. That it meant God smiled on us. That I was chosen to fight against the demon that could not be killed.”

“...'Demon'?” asked Yusuf. “What—Oh! Did they mean me?”

“If you are the one I fought, the one who is like me and does not stay dead, then yes.”

“But if they said your being raised from the dead was an act of God, then—That is ridiculous!” Yusuf sputtered. “You bring your soldiers across the seas to attack _us_ in our homes _,_ to raze _our_ cities, and slaughter _our_ people, and—”

“Yes,” agreed the frog quietly. “If it is of God, it is as punishment, not praise, I expect.”

Yusuf blinked at that.

“The…” Another pause for an unknown word. “The…The church's...” Apparently the word just wasn't going to come. “When they called us to fight, they said it was for God. That all…That whatever bad we had done would be forgiven, and we would go to heaven when we died. To suffer and die but instead return, every time, is a fitting punishment, I suppose.” The frog shuffled again, and continued even more quietly. “I did not stop, though. I kept fighting. Kept fighting you. Perhaps that is why this happened. I cannot die, but nor can I lift my sword.”

How many times _had_ he died, wondered Yusuf. Yusuf knew how many times he had—one hardly forgot such things. If the frog's—the Frank's, that is—resurrections were a divine punishment, then Yusuf could hardly assume that his were not. The idea that one was punishment and the other blessing simply did not make sense, even if the Frank's comrades believed such a thing. Would Yusuf also be transformed, into a frog or another creature? Did it happen after a certain number of deaths? Or, as the frog speculated, if one continued to fight and kill after realizing one was resurrecting?

Yusuf glanced at the almost-forgotten corpses of the brigands with a shiver. They had attacked him without provocation. Surely God would not punish him for defending himself. But…he had also been actively trying to kill the Frank when the Frank killed him. Was Yusuf “safe” because the Frank was the invader? Why then were the other Franks not meeting a similar fate?

Yusuf sighed. There were no obvious answers, only more questions. Regardless, it seemed safe to assume that their situations were linked.

He sighed. “What is your name?” he asked the frog.

“…Nicolò.”

“I am Yusuf.”

***

Yusuf's eyebrows knitted together as he watched the frog literally step on his dinner. Yusuf and Nicolò had tentatively agreed that small (bug-sized) bits of meat from the food Yusuf was preparing for himself seemed like they ought to adequately stand in for the insects frogs generally ate, at least until they figured out a better idea. Nicolò, for his part, did not sound eager to try a more authentic frog diet. He did, however, admit to being ravenously hungry. He had eaten nothing since breaking his fast early that morning, and it was by now rather late in the evening.

So before settling down with his own food, Yusuf had carefully carved off a half dozen or so small morsels of meat and placed them in front of the frog. It was the eating thereof that did not seem to be going well.

He finally asked. “Is there a problem?”

There was a long pause.

“...I can't see them” was the morose response.

“What?!”

“I can't see them. It's hard to see much of anything that isn't moving.”

He continued clumsily groping for the food with his forefeet, managing to grasp one of them, but he couldn't seem to manipulate it to his mouth.

Yusuf sighed and set down his own food.

If he couldn't see anything that wasn't moving, then...Yusuf picked up the nearest morsel and carefully moved it back and forth in front of the frog. _That_ got his attention. (Yusuf could scarcely believe he was picking up body language from a frog, of all things, but he was slowly picking up nuances.)

“Can you see it now?”

“...Yes.”

“Can you eat it, then?”

“I...Maybe…”

The frog shifted his weight as if gauging his aim. The frog's tongue shot out, and Yusuf's eyebrows rose. “That,” he said, politely, “is my thumb.”

“Iaooow” was the garbled answer from the frog, speaking around where his tongue still adhered to Yusuf's thumb.

He managed to get detached and reset to try again. Yusuf dutifully waved the morsel, starting to warm up to this activity. It promised to add some entertainment to the evening, if nothing else.

The frog's second attempt overcorrected and glued his tongue to Yusuf's index finger instead, causing him to stumble as his tongue yanked him along following the motion of Yusuf's hand. The third attempt missed both meat and hand entirely. Finally, on attempt number four, his tongue actually made contact with the food and managed to pull it into his mouth.

Yusuf took the opportunity to wipe sticky saliva off his fingers and grab a bite of his own dinner while the frog swallowed, bulging eyes retracting into his head as he forced the morsel down. Yusuf wasn't sure that he'd ever actually watched a frog eat before. It was rather interesting.

The frog was silent for a few moments. Yusuf supposed, with a slight wince of sympathy, that if _he_ was having an interesting time learning oddities of how frogs ate, then Nicolò must be having a truly bizarre experience discovering them from the inside.

After grabbing a few more bites for himself, he offered the frog a second morsel. This one took only three attempts to actually get into the frog. Progress.

By the fifth, they seemed to be getting the hang of the process, and Yusuf allowed his mind wander. As a result, when the frog missed, squarely attaching his tongue to Yusuf's thumb again, he failed stop the motion of his hand before the frog was dragged right off his webbed feet. A torrent of garbled curses in a language Yusuf didn't know—presumably Nicolò's own native tongue—poured out around his stuck tongue as he struggled to right himself and detach from Yusuf's fingers.

Yusuf was sincerely apologetic for his inability to refrain from laughing at the sight. Truly, he was. He would, however, maintain for many centuries to come that some things are simply beyond the abilities of mortal men. (“You are not now, and were not then, a mortal man,” Nicolò would remind him for equally many centuries.)


	3. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf and Nicolò start to iron out the details of traveling together and discuss their strange dreams about two mysterious immortal women.

Yusuf stopped in his tracks, his two waterskins, a small makeshift net, and a small basket slung over his shoulder, to watch what the frog was doing.

Or, more precisely, to figure out what the frog was _trying_ to do. He suspected the intent would more apparent if Nicolò were more competent at being a frog. As it was, what he was actually _doing_ seemed to consist largely of erratic somersaults tracing a rough progression across their campsite.

He watched as Nicolò clumsily backtracked from his latest flop, carefully turned around to face the center of their camp, made some positional adjustments for reasons unapparent to Yusuf, and leapt again. He landed safely. He took a moment to reset and leapt again. This time he spun off-course to his right and tumbled awkwardly as he landed.

Yusuf frowned. There was no apparent reason for the frog to have fumbled his jump that badly.

Nicolò again flipped himself upright, determinedly crawled back towards the starting point of his aborted jump, stopped—this time at a sharp angle to his previous path—and started his arcane preparations again. After a few seconds of fumbling about, he awkwardly rotated back towards his apparently goal, and— _Oh!_

He had a stick.

A thin, forked stick much, much longer than his body, which he was (apparently) trying to carry in his tiny frog mouth as he hopped towards—Yusuf glanced away from him to check _—_ towards the fire ring. Where there were, in fact, several slightly smaller and straighter sticks that Yusuf had definitely _not_ collected.

Yusuf wasn't sure whether to be more amused that a singularly clumsy frog half the size of his hand had assigned himself the duty of collecting kindling or impressed that he was, against all odds, actually making some progress at it. He realized, somewhat guiltily, that he had been away on his own mission to collect water from the stream rather longer than Nicolò had probably expected, but hoped the frog would be pleased with the results of Yusuf's own self-assigned side task.

Yusuf continued on into their campsite, arriving just as Nicolò completed the last three, nearly error-free hops in succession, bringing his stick triumphantly to the tiny kindling pile. (His triumph was only slightly marred by the fact that his last hop ended _on_ the previously collected sticks, leading to some flailing as he tried to regain a solid footing.)

“Nicolò, is that for kindling?”

“'Kindling'?...Is that...small wood for a fire?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. 'Kindling.'”

“Excellent. Thank you! I collected something for you as well!”

“...Water?” asked the frog, sounding confused.

“Well, yes. I have water, too.” Yusef propped the waterskins against his pack. “But something else.”

Yusuf carefully set his small covered basket on the ground, grinning. He carefully cracked it open and slipped a hand inside, gently capturing a couple of its skittering inhabitants. It had taken him nearly half an hour to capture this many with his makeshift net when he had realized how many were gathered around the tiny stream, but he was confident it would be worth it.

He proudly dropped two live crickets on the ground in front of Nicolò and sat back.

The insects immediately bolted, as Yusuf expected. That's why he'd collected plenty. The frog initially flinched away from the unexpected movement in front of him, but then instinct appeared to take over—his tongue shot out and snagged one of the crickets before it could get far.

Yusuf waited, still beaming, to hear his reaction to actual, proper frog food.

Nicolò swallowed convulsively and sat in frozen silence for a solid 30 seconds. The smile slowly faded off of Yusuf's face. Was he wrong? Frogs did eat these, didn't they?

Nicolò shuddered and finally spoke.

“What the _h_ _ell_ was that?! It was _still_ _moving_!”

(On second thought, maybe it would have been better to _tell_ him what the surprise was…)

***

Yusuf's eyes shot open, and he lay on his back, staring up at the peaceful stars. He assumed their beauty was lost on Nicolò, since they weren't moving, but it occurred to him that he hadn't really asked what he _could_ see. He could hear a hum of insects nearby, a dramatic change from the clashing swords and pounding hoofbeats from his dream.

The dream had felt incredibly real, like many of his dreams of late. Like it was his own hand wielding the double-bladed axe and simultaneously his own hands loosing well-aimed arrows at the axe-wielder's foes.

As his heartbeat slowed, he glanced over to where Nicolò slept on top of his pack.

The frog's open eyes met his. Caught off-guard, Yusuf summoned up a weak smile. “Ah, awake as well, my friend?”

“Just awakened,” answered Nicolò. They sat for another moment with no sound other than the humming of the insects. Then, “I was dreaming.”

Yusuf levered himself up on one elbow.

“I, too! Did you...dream of two women?”

“Yes. One with an axe and one with a bow.”

“I have been dreaming of them since I was first slain in Jerusalem. Vivid dreams. It feels like I am there.”

“So have I.” Nicolò's voice got even quieter. “They are strange dreams, but it is nice to feel human again, even if it is not as myself.”

“I have dreamt of them resurrecting. Like us,” said Yusuf.

“As have I.”

“...If we are both dreaming of them, then...they are not normal dreams. Do you think they are real? More like us?”

“Perhaps,” said Nicolò. “Well...not entirely like us.”

Yusuf eyed him quizzically.

“Neither of them is a frog. That bodes well for you, I suppose.”

***

“Should we try to find them, do you think?” said Nicolò, the next morning.

“...Them?”

“The women. From our dreams.”

Yusuf sighed. “I suppose it is the wisest thing to do. We cannot stay here. Well, _I_ cannot stay here—I imagine the problems with being frog-shaped will be much the same wherever we go.” Rumors about fighters rising from the dead in Jerusalem had—predictably—spread like wildfire, and there were too many people who knew Yusuf who had seen him die and then reappear. He could not afford to return home and hope to remain hidden. “The question is where to _start_.”

They continued their trek away from Jerusalem and their unwanted fame, dissecting every detail either of them could remember of the odd dreams as Yusuf walked. They had an immediate goal now: a nearby town where they could get supplies and prepare for a longer journey. Yusuf hoped they had gotten far enough from Jerusalem and anyone with first-hand knowledge of his resurrections that it was safe to mingle with others as long as he blended into the crowd. (Safe or not, they would have to resupply sooner or later, unless he was to eat crickets as well.)

Nicolò rode on Yusuf's shoulder, the better to converse, with the agreement that he would climb into the top of the pack if someone approached. The last thing Yusuf needed was to spark more rumors, this time about “the crazy man talking to a frog.”

Their dreams had been breathtakingly similar, if not identical, but the same dream never repeated.

“That's good,” said Nicolò.

Yusuf snorted. “That means we only have one chance to see a clue or it's gone forever.”

“That means we're probably seeing where they are _now_ , not just where they once _were_ ,” countered Nicolò. “If we are meant to find them, then we will find them. I cannot believe will will miss them for lack of one clue. Besides, there are two of us, so two chances to notice it.”

Yusuf suspected that if there were a clue to be found, Nicolò would probably be the one to recall it. He remembered the dreams in astonishing detail, although he stumbled over the words to describe them.

“I...I thought maybe they were visions from God, at first,” he admitted quietly. “That maybe my coming back was a gift, and the dreams would tell me what I should do with it.” He croaked quietly. “Then...I thought perhaps they were a warning.”

“And now?” prompted Yusuf gently.

“Now?” The frog huffed a chuckle that turned into another croak. “Now they are the only time of the day when I can see through human eyes again. How could I not pay attention?”

They were both silent for a moment.

“I am afraid the dreams will stop, and then I will have nothing but being a frog. All the time.”

“Well...Neither of them is a frog _now_ , but perhaps they were,” said Yusuf, in an encouraging tone. “Maybe they know how to fix it!”


	4. Frog Got Your Tongue?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf and Nicolò regroup after getting separated. Yusuf thinks Nicolò is over-reacting.

Yusuf scrubbed his hands over his face. He wasn't sure whether to be more worried or irritated.

He wasn't an unreasonable man. He understood why Nicolò was upset with him. Yusuf should have been more careful. A small frog on his own in a crowded bazaar was in serious danger, and Yusuf should never have been so careless as to lost track of him.

But enough was enough! Despite his current shape, Nicolò was a grown man who should be able to act maturely about this! And when it came down to it, despite his current size, Nicolò's immortality meant that, in many ways, he had been the safest creature in the market aside from Yusuf himself.

Nicolò disagreed, apparently. He had not deigned to speak to Yusuf since Yusuf had found him again after a slightly frantic search. (By another well, strangely enough.) He would not so much as acknowledge Yusuf's apologies or reassure him that he was unharmed. Yusuf _knew_ he could not be physically harmed, of course—not permanently—but such a question was a standard expression of concern and deserved acknowledgement!

“Look, Nicolò, I am sorry. I apologize from the bottom of my heart for letting us get separated and putting you at risk, but I cannot change the past!” (Yusuf restrained himself from adding “No more than you can!”) “Would you please stop this?”

The frog said nothing. Didn't even look in his direction.

Yusuf swore and gave up. _Fine_. If he wanted to sit on the windowsill, staring into the distance and catching bugs, then let him. Yusuf had better things to do than plead with a frog to forgive him.

He systematically laid out the contents of their packs on the bed and floor, along with the handful of new purchases he had managed to make before noticing Nicolò's absence, to catalogue and determine what else they needed to obtain before their departure. He was deep in his work when he heard the first shriek from outside.

Nicolò scrambled ungracefully aside as Yusuf leaned on the windowsill to peer outside. Yusuf was briefly put out by the frog's flinching away—surely they were beyond that? But the commotion outside was more pressing.

A man ran down the alley, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, weaving between bystanders. An uneasy commotion spread in his wake as people looked around for the cause.

At first, the bystanders seemed to find no cause for alarm. Then, panic started to spread from the end of the street where he had entered. Yusuf still could see no reason for it from his vantage point at the window.

“Yusuf! What's wrong?!” said Nicolò.

Yusuf glanced distractedly at the frog by his side. _Oh, now_ _you'll_ _talk_ _to me_ _?_ “I don't know. I don't see anything. Whatever it is has a lot of them frightened. Stay here. I'll go down and—”

“Yusuf! Wait!”

Yusuf blinked. He had been looking right at the frog when he—when _Nicolò_ —spoke. But the frog hadn't moved.

Nicolò's voice also sounded strangely out of breath and far away, like he was shouting from a distance rather than—

“Yusuf! Not so fast! Please! I can't keep up! _Why are you running?_ ”

Yusuf looked from the frog on the windowsill to the street below, where increasingly baffled and alarmed locals retreated into doorways and up against the walls of the surrounding buildings, backing away from…

A small green shape hopping down the middle of the alley as fast as its legs could propel it.

_Oh, no._

Yusuf raced for the stairs.

***

“Did you hear about the talking frog?”

Yusuf barely caught himself from whipping around to find whoever had spoken. The voice was unlikely to be addressing him—clear across the courtyard and not raised to carry to someone at a distance. He had been tuning out the chatter from other guests of the inn for a while now.

He kept his head down and strained his ears while he continued to sort out the tack for his newly acquired horse and plan how to best load it with their packs.

“The _what?_ ” laughed a second man.

“Talking frog. Fellow came tearing through in a panic yesterday, insisting there was a 'demon frog' chasing him and shouting his name in a man's voice.” The speaker laughed. “I think he drank something a bit stronger than he should have after being out in the sun all day.”

“Sounds more likely than _his_ version.”

“It does, indeed, but oddly enough, he's got some corroboration,” the innkeeper chimed in.

“Really? How so?”

“He came past here down the back alley. Folks in the street thought he was mad at first—some still do. But Majid a few doors down swears he actually saw the frog, and I've never known him to be a liar or prone to flights of fancy. He didn't _hear_ anything other than the general commotion, but who's ever heard of a frog chasing a man down the street?”

Yusuf shifted in his seat so he could watch the others talk out of the corner of his eye while he worked.

The first stranger frowned, his head tilted to the side. “He's sure it was a live frog? Could have been some kind of charlatan rather than a drunk, dragging a frog on a string trying to make a tall tale for his own purposes.”

“Looked alive to Majid.” The innkeeper shrugged. “Said it was hopping along as fast as it could go. Loosing ground on the fellow, too, so couldn't have just been on a string.”

“That's a _strange_ frog, then.” The second stranger broke in. “But still a far cry from _talking_. Surely if the 'demon' was shouting at him, someone else would have heard it.”

“Some of 'em did!”

The innkeeper's daughter had stopped in her chores, no longer able to keep silent. The girl quailed slightly as three heads turned in her direction.

“Well?” prompted her father.

“Sara was there with _both_ her parents when he came by! They _all_ heard what sounded like another man shouting and chasing him, but there was no one there to shout but the frog! And it didn't sound like any frog they'd ever heard.”

“What did it say?” The second stranger folded his arms skeptically.

“They said it sounded like 'stop' and 'Yusuf.'”

Yusuf closed his eyes, suppressing a wince, and thanked God he and Nicolò had decided to keep Nicolò out of sight to avoid trying to explain why Yusuf was traveling with a pet frog.

Nonetheless, he waited for the conversation to move on to other topics before he put everything away and returned to his room, hoping the “coincidence” of his name matching that of the frog-fleeing man would remain unnoticed and unremarked. He just hoped that they didn't need to move up their departure. He hated to rush preparations for a major journey.

***

The talking frog remained a hot topic of conversation for the following several days up until their departure. Fortunately, no one seemed to think twice about there being any connection with Yusuf himself except to joke that he'd best watch out for frogs.

Enough witnesses confirmed both the presence of a frog and the frog appearing make human-like sounds to save the unfortunate second Yusuf from being judged either a liar or a drunk. (Nicolò, while worried about the volume of swirling rumors Yusuf reported back, had expressed relief on this point—he was sorry enough to have frightened the man without thinking he'd damaged his reputation as well.)

It was the interpretation of the facts that remained up for hot debate. Some whispered nervously of dark forces at work. Others insisted that all the hearers were being deceived by some trick of sound, like a shout from elsewhere bouncing oddly off the walls. The overall consensus around the inn seemed to be coalescing around a theory put forth by one of its guests—a staid merchant who pontificated as if he had been everywhere and seen everything.

“Trick of the mind,” he had said, shaking his head ponderously. “You travel enough, you'll hear animals make stranger sounds than you'd ever imagine possible. Some you'd swear couldn't be anything but an infant crying or a woman screaming in terror, no matter what the locals say, up until you see the creature with your own eyes. It was probably just an uncommon sort of frog with a human-like call, perhaps even a foreign frog that someone kept as a pet to trot out for entertainment. I bet people would pay good money to see a frog that could 'speak' like a man.Then when it got loose, what else would the silly creature do but to chase after people expecting to be fed for its trick?”

“So at least the 'demon frog' rumor seems to be safely settled,” Yusuf assured Nicolò, as he fished out one of the few remaining crickets to drop in front of him, “although we'd still better keep you well out of sight until we're away from here.”

Nicolò reluctantly snagged the bug before grumbling something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“...I said, maybe I'd rather be thought a demon frog than a more pathetic dancing bear.”

Yusuf was not entirely successful at suppressing his chuckle. “I see...Perhaps now is a bad time to mention my brilliant new idea in case we run low on funds on our travels...”


End file.
